Monday, July 23, 2012

As a fan of the Asterix books for last 20 years there are
countless numbers of times when I was greatly amused and had laughs of
different degrees caused by the humor, wit, word play, pun and spoof created
by the Great Goscinny and Uderzo in those books.

Obviously I have read the English and Bengali version of the
Asterix books and not the original French version. Hence some of the humor and
word play are lost in translation and also some of the English word play should
be credited to Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge who did a tremendous job of
translating these books in English.

But one aspect where Ms. Bell and Mr. Hockridge could not
have much impact is the visual spoof in Asterix stories. Time and time again
various contemporary events and personalities have made their appearance in
Asterix books through the drawing of Albert Uderzo.

Let me discuss some of those spoofs which occurred in
various Asterix books. Some of them are quite clear but some of them very
subtle and nicely wrapped in the story. For example, Goscinny and Uderzo showed
their respect to their great competitor Harge when in ‘Asterix the Legionary’,
the person from Belgium in Asterix’s ranks have a small tuft of hair a-la
Tintin who hailed from Belgium (More details is in this awesome blog ). It was a
subtle one. Another rather simpler tribute to Tintin stories were seen later,
in ‘Asterix in Belgium’ where the great detectives Thomson and Thompson made a
cameo to announce the arrival of Julius Caesar, the great Roman Emperor to be
precise.

(To be precise...)

In 60’s, The Beatles was a rage in Great Britain as well as
the entire globe with their brand of music. They had huge fan following specially
among girls and there are many stories about the love and frenzy showed by
their fans in wherever they go. When Asterix and Obelix made a visit to Britain
in their 1966 book ‘Asterix in Britain’ obviously they found the hysteria
around an all-male 4 member music group topping the chart.

(Notice the hair...)

During those days except The Beatles, another most famous British
personality, although fictional, was the secret service agent James Bond (with
code name 007), portrayed by Shaun Connery in 7 official Bond movies during
1960-70. Hence in the 1981 book ‘Asterix and the Black Gold’ the Roman spy was
aptly named Dubbelosix who had an uncanny resemblance with a slightly older
Shaun Connery.

(006 ... 007)

Let me take another
example, this is from my most favourite Asterix adventure ‘Asterix and the
Great Crossing’. The story is rather simple one, while trying to catch fresh
fish from the sea, the super duo of Asterix and Obelix would meet with a great
thunder and as a result end up being in the new continent of America. And after
various events there including a marriage proposal for Obleix by the leader of
red Indians they would try to run away from there. And while escaping they
would get into another rather small island and then Asterix would do this:

(Not to forget this statue is a gift to the United States from the people of France)

It’s a simple one but with Oblix’s dialogue in the previous
frame, this one is one of my all-time favourite spoofs in Asterix books.

Then I read ‘Asterix and the Great Divide’. It’s not a great
story, obviously not a classic, it was also written by Uderzo only after the
death of Goscinny. But one particular page of this book actually fascinated me
a lot.

You can click on the above pic to expand it. The entire idea
of Histrionix meeting Melodrama in her balcony reminds you of ‘Romeo and Juliet’
and then Uderzo uses a parody of “O Romeo,
Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?” spoken by Melodrama.

But that’s not it, in the same page, if you look at the last
frame; this was clearly very much inspired by the movie posters and comics of
Tarzan, especially with the knife hanging from the waist.

And then it struck me. It’s not only the spoof but also the
huge range captured by these two geniuses through their books is what makes these
books so memorable and lifelong treasure.

These are just a few instances; I know there are many more
such spoofs spread around these 30-odd books and I do not count out the chance of a 2nd part of this in near future, especially after buying
two more Asterix books this evening.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Being the only child in a small family of three people, I always felt lonely and often played alone. Hence I had to invent various games or ways to amuse myself and keep me busy. That's why I was an avid reader all my life because you do not need anyone else when you are reading a book.

My habit of playing alone has gone through various transition. From the days of playing book cricket and board games against myself to playing table tennis against a wall, and finally in 2005 I found the ultimate game for playing alone, FIFA against the computer (that would be a topic of one of my blogs someday).

But before I invented to individual sports (in true sense) I used to entertain myself by replicating certain things which was happening around. And as 3 years old during mid-late 80s the most interesting thing was those television shows. Grandest of all, off course Ramayan!!

Being a reader and fan of stories, I knew those stories even at that age and when those events were happening in front of my eyes that amazed my three year old self to no limit.

But Raam was never my hero, I still do not think highly of him. Laxman, Indrajit, Ravan (yeah, I am sure some people are fans of Bad man) no one was very impressive.

But Hanuman!! Yeah, now you are talking! Hanuman was a cult. Hanuman was the first super hero. He can jump over the ocean and fight to demons who captures his shadow, he can lift a mountain, he can say 'Jai Sree Raam' for countless number of times and still not bore you. Hanuman was cool. Even he used to come in an advertisement of asbestos sheet just before the Ramayan starts.

I was in love with Hanuaan. I remember I used to have one of those kids' mace and with which I was always the Hanuman. Not Raam, not Ravan but Hanuman and being Hanuman (I always read that whenever I see one of those 'Being Human' T-shirts) my imagination could fly to no limit. He can get all the chocolates, can go and bring back dad early from the office and can do all the Dhisum-dhisum with demons.

And then one day I came to know from my dad that, Hanuman also had another name, Wow! I thought. Hanuman also had a 'daak naam' (we bengalis always have two names, remember 'Kahaani') and the name was Dara Singh! Now that's a cool name for Hanuman, I mean Dara Singh sounded much more warrior like than Arun Govil. And that day onwards Hanuman and Dara Singh became the same person for me.

Had to grow up, did some more reading, study about Bollywood, came to know about Dara Singh the person, watched some of his old movies, a few new movies (Kal Ho Na Ho). His roles may be small but as long as he is in the screen my focus used to be always on him. That childhood liking, hero-worship continued even till today.

I think, on Monday I read about his illness and the news that he is hospitalized. My spirit was dampened which was some what lifted reading a few comments in ToI, where all the reader were writing about how good he was and praying for his speedy recovery.

The problem with God is that, if something going to happen then how much prayer you do, how much tears you drop nothing can stop that event. And today, when I logged in to Facebook, I started seeing the condolence messages for Dara Singh, I still did not believe and checked ToI, but Dara Singh is really dead.

My first Idol, my first hero is gone. According to Indian mythology Hanuman is eternal, he can not be dead. Thank you, Dara Singh Ji, for making Hanuman eternal in my mind's eye too. Whenever I will think about Hanuman, about my childhood, your face will come in my mind. Rest in peace Sir. Be Good wherever you are.

PS. This is the 50th post of my blog. Even till late last night I was thinking of a suitable topic to write and somewhat came to a structure. But after this news I thought it would be important to save a memorable part of my childhood in the webspace as a tribute to great Dara Singh.

Monday, July 9, 2012

There are in total 33 books of Asterix. I am sad to accept
that I have not read all of them yet. I do have all the PDFs but I prefer to
read actual books and till now I could have collected only two-third of those
books. And yes I am a big fan of them. I read these books time and time again
and absolutely love the pun, wit, humour and parody created by Goscinny and
Uderzo in these books. With the multiple readings and re-readings of these
Asterix comics I have noticed how various contemporary events made their
appearance with a different guise. May it be Neil Armstrong’s famous quote
after landing on the moon (Asterix and the Great Crossing) or the name of Hindu
gods and reference of cricket (Asterix and the magic Carpet), sometimes I
wonder how could they even did their thorough research in those days of no
google and Wikipedia.

But the one I read recently took that banter into a
completely different level. The book I am referring to is ‘Obelix and Co.’ and
the subject of their banter, Capitalism!!
Now that is something you don’t easily get in a comics. Tintin did touch
various political issues and even try to highlight a global conspiracy to
increase the oil price in ‘Land of Black Gold’ but this Asterix book is in a
completely different level.

The story started in a typical fashion in Totorum, one of
four Roman camps near the Gaulish village. But unlike the other stories, the
legionaries are not following much discipline. The reason is simple, they have
decided not to go out of their own camp from the fear of getting beaten by
those indomitable Gauls. The only thing they do was to wait for their relief.
The relief party did come which brought great excitement in the Gaulish village
who decided to gift that entire Roman army to Obelix on the occasion of his
birthday!! And after a few painful moments when Obelix was enjoying his
birthday present and the other villagers singing “Happy Birthday to you” this
Roman army group also asked for their relief.

All these events made Julias Caesar an unhappy man in Rome.
And to add the misery all his experienced officers has now become corrupt and
only interested in maintaining protocol. This has been pointed out by
Preposterus (who incidentally was a pass out of LSE, Latin School of
Economics), and it was him who came up with the idea of corrupting Gauls by
introducing capitalism in their mind. And his target is none other than Obelix
and his menhir delivery business.

And there starts all the craziness! With the sheer mastery
of their art, Goscinny and Uderzo touched all the various aspect of consumer
market and corporates. The business lunch, the circle of money, the production
of useless fancy products, the meaningless campaign strategy to attract buyers
by making them envious to their neighbours, over production, menhir graveyards
(to keep useless old menhirs ala car graveyard) nothing was missed. That’s not
the end, those big sugar-quoted advertisements on the bill boards, a competition
from home grown businesses as well as foreign makers, free gifts with menhirs and
even a road block (common tactic by French/Bengali strikers) made their occurrence
in the book.

But finally the bubble had busted and all the sestertius
given by the Romans were devalued and our Gaulish village went back to their
normal way of thrashing Romans. This time it was a gift from Obelix to the
villagers who showed great resilientof his character by not touching a single
Roman during the attack.

On the outside this is another simple, funny Asterix
adventure but if you can dig deep you will get the true meaning. Although it is
happening around us all the time but the complexity of these strategies are
rooted far deeper. But the effortless way this book has touched the actual
problem is mind blowing.

This one will always remain one of my favourites in the
Asterix series.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

"God created me to
delight people with goals."Romario (Brazil, Barcelona and 9 other clubs)

I will go ahead and say
God created the Brazilian football team to delight people with football.

XXX---------------------XXX

When I started
understanding various sports in late 1980s India was a different country. No
open economy, no internet, not even foreign sports channels. And hence like
many of the Indian kids of that time I got familiar with names like Kapil Dev,
Srikanth and Azharuddin pretty quickly. I loved cricket as a kid and that’s the
very first sports which I adopt.

But then football has
its global presence and own appeal. It’s difficult to ignore it and being a
bong I started remembering names like Chima Okery, Subrata Bhatttacharya,
Krishanu Dey and Bikash Pnaji and I still remember the evening when while
watching a live match in the television my father explained why I should
support the Mohun Bagan club and keep a constant dislike towards those red and
gold players playing against them. But International football, what’s that?
It’s only a few clips in the Sunday afternoon sports show in DD with Kishore
Bhimani’s baritone.

Then came Italia’90 with
its peculiar looking logo and a bubble gum which would give one free card with
the picture of a world cup star and being the eternal fighter I get into a
fierce rivalry with many of my friends to collect more cards than others. I
remember having cards of Walter Zenga, Robarto Donadoni, Juregen Klinsmann,
Careca and Roger Milla. I also went great length for collecting the card with
Diego Maradona’s photo but not because I liked him because it was difficult to
get.

And why I did not like
him? Instead which player I supported? That’s the topic of this blog post.

During late 80s and
early 90s there was a popular weekly magazine called ‘Saptahik Bartaman’, I
think it’s still available but not sure whether it’s equally popular. My
parents had a regular subscription of that and just before the 1990 FIFA world
cup; the magazine started a feature where every week they had one page
describing some key highlights of one previous world cup with hand drawn black
& white pictures. I remember reading all of them from 1930 to 1986. I
remember reading about ‘Battle of Santiago’, ‘The rise (8-3) and fall (2-3) of
Hungary’, ‘The 1974 final where Netherlands took the lead before even a single
German player touching the ball’ and ‘The hand of God’.

But the ones I
remembered the most at that age was Maracana stadium and the heartbreak of
1950, Pele and the little bird mesmerizing the world in 1958, then again in
1962, and greatest Brazilian team of 1970. And I started having a soft corner
for the Selecaos and knew that Argentina is the name of the arch enemy when I
was just 6 years old.

Then came the actual
world cup, I was in my Masimoni’s place, she was a big time fan of Maradona and
I remember the party atmosphere on the opening day of world cup. I remember my
mother saying, Argentina might lose! But no one took her seriously, why should
they? Argentina, the remaining champs were playing with Cameroon, just another
African country making up the numbers. But my mother’s strong intuition worked
again when Cameroon gate crashed Argentina’s party thanks to a goal from Omam
Biyik. I remember that I started watching the match but slept midway and next
morning woke with news of the upset. I do not remember many matches of that
world cup but I remember reading in the same ‘Saptahik Bartaman’ in the World
cup final special issue about how Brazil was beaten by Argentina in the second
round by the solitary goal from Cannigia. I read about the tears of Brazil
supporters and my dislike towards Argentina just grew more.

Although I did not
remember any other matches but I do remember names like Schillaci, Goycochea
and Gascoigne and that was my short memory of international football for time
being.

4 years passed and
another FIFA world cup comes with a lot of hype because it’s happening in USA,
the land of hope and dream. In those last four years I was busy with Sachin
Tendulkar, Vinod Kambli, Anil Kumble and Hero cup win and India’s spin trio and
home test wins but as the world cup came I have started rooting for my
favourite yellow jersey. But that time I am 11 years old, read the newspapers
and magazines in more details. I knew about the teams, their stars and the
groups. The world cup being in US, the matches were really really late, and I
remember lots of matches where I was scolded by my parents for sleeping with TV
on. But I did make a point to watch all the Brazil matches staying up as late
as possible. Romario was the hero who scored 5 goals to take Brazil in the
final. The up-front partnership of Romario and Bebeto was lethal. And then
Bebeto become the most popular player of that world cup with his baby rocking
celebration after scoring against Netherlands in the quarter final just after
few days of the birth of his 3rd children. In the same match, Brazil
very typically from a 2-0 score line managed to allow Netherlands to come back
at 2-2 but then Branco converted a direct free kick from around 30 yards to
take Brazil into the semis.

The final between Brazil
and Italy started around 1 o’clock in the night and with 120 minutes of goal
less draw and penalty kicks when it was finally over with Roberto Baggio’s
missed penalty kick it was close to 4 o’clock. Never before I was awake so late
in my 11 years of life. I was much tensed during the tie-breaker and remember
spending some of it in the room and some of it in the balcony as I could not
watch it out of nervousness.

The real transition
happened from 94 to 98. Mind you, no internet and not much ESPN yet but the
sports page of newspapers and magazines like ‘Sportstar’, ‘Khela’ and sports
section of ‘Anandamela’ taught me a lot about football. I started knowing about
the club football. I came to know about AC Milan, Real Madrid, Manchester
United and Barcelona. I came to know about Copa America and UEFA Cup. Cricket
was still my sports of choice but I was not as oblivious about football as in
the first half of 90s.

The new megastar of
Brazilian football was coming up. The shaved headed Ronaldo Luis Nazario De
Lima came along with the group of superstars like Roberto Carlos, Dunga,
Rivaldo and Denilson. By that time it’s not any more just watching your
favourite team play, it was the whole hearted crazy support of the team.
Fighting with friends in the school and memorizing history to use them in the
argument. The prayers have started before the game and all the superstitions
about what to wear and where to sit during a Brazil game in world cup has
started.

That fanatism just
increased in all these years, from the heart break of 1998 final to the ecstasy
of the 2002 and then again the heart breaks of last two world cups it was a
wonderful journey. I have a special feeling for world cup 2002, it was amazing
to see how could one single man, in this case Ronaldo, came back like phoenix
from the ashes of his mysterious illness to ’98 final to became the main
architect of Brazil’s world cup triumph of 2002.

In the meantime another
dimension of world football was opening to me. I came to know about David
Beckham and the great man Sir Alex Farguson. I watched the highlights of their
breath taking win over Bayern Munich in the Champions league final and became
an instant fan of the Baby-faced Ole Gunnar Solskjær. Slowly my love towards
Manchester United grew and with the advancement of internet I started following
Man Utd religiously but I never stopped keeping track of my Brazilian heroes.

I do get upset about the
fact that the most of the Brazilian players choose Italy and Spain as their
preferred country for playing club football and hardly any big name of
Brazilian team came to play in Manchester but I never stopped keeping track of
Kaka, Ronaldinho, Pato and Fabiano and always wish them to do well whenever
they are playing any match for their club side (except against United). I also
have a special feeling for Jose Ramirez Barreto who is represents that awesome
and rare combination of my love towards Brazil and Mohun Bagan. And when it
comes to their match for the Selecaos, be it Copa America, Friendlies or World
Cup qualifier I try to follow it and support them with as much passion as
possible.

The world cup is going
back to Brazil after 64 years in 2014 and although I have made plans with Kanad
and Madhumitadi to visit Brazil to watch 2014 world cup but I do not know how
realistic this would be but be it in India or be it in Brazil, in my mind I
will be there with my heroes as strongly as possible, may be more closely as I
know that this team is not as strong as the team of 90s or early 2000s. And
that’s how I see a fan’s role become important. Everyone can support their team
at the time of success but a true fan is who stays with his team even at the
time of difficulty and heartbreaks. The life keeps moving and you never know
the glory days may be just round the corner.

So, my beloved Brazilian
team, keep playing well and keep entertaining people. Trust me, no other team
makes football as beautiful and graceful as you can do and I do believe you
know how to win trophies through your beautiful style. I will be always there
to cheer you and cheer those mesmerizing moments you create on field.